The Small World Of Redheads in DC
by MurphysScribe
Summary: NCIS/X-Files Crossover. We all know about Agent Gibbs and redheads. When Abby introduces Gibbs to her former professor, she has no idea. Blame velvetmouse for giving me plot bunnies when I have deadlines.
1. Enter Scully

Stepping through the doors of Abby's lab, coffee in one hand and a nice frosty CafPow in the other, Gibbs heard Abby over the din of the usual electronic music.

"And the best part is you're going to meet the rest of the team! Here comes Gibbs with my CafPow now. I don't have anything for you yet Gibbs," she raised her voice as he approached. "I'm running the prints, and I'm running the trace you got off the petty officer's shoes." She bounced over to meet him halfway. "I was just about out of caffeine though and I'm glad you showed up because you have to meet the reason I'm here at all, the professor who taught me forensics!" Abby grabbed his free hand and bounced into the lab.

Agent Gibbs followed his favorite forensics expert with a grin.

But when he saw the diminutive redhead perched on the stool by the Mass Spec, he dropped his coffee from suddenly nerveless fingers.

Special Agent Gibbs and Special Agent Dana Scully gaped at each other.

"You?" said two flabbergasted voices in unison.


	2. Flashback First meeting

Washington DC:

Early December 1994

Timeline notes: Scully has been working with Mulder for about a year. Fudging the NCIS timeline a bit... Agent Gibbs is with NIS, has become friends with FBI Agent Fornell (and has bonded over ex wife number two, and Fornell's impending messy divorce from same.) I'm fudging that Gibbs is fluent in ASL before meeting Abby as well. Seems like a good thing to know in combat.

"Gibbs?" a voice called through the house.

"Down here, Tobias!" Gibbs called. He put down his hammer.

The balding FBI agent stood at the top of the stairs. "Why am I not surprised?" He shrugged out of his damp trenchcoat and draped it over his arm. "I thought you were further along than this?"

"It's not the same boat. How are things? How's Emily?" Gibbs upended two jars of nails and reached for the bourbon.

"Emily's doing well. She's about to be in her first Christmas pageant ever. Speaking of holiday cheer, it's Friday."

"And?"

"FBI Christmas party. Out of the basement. Into a crowd of agents. Free booze to toast," he raised an empty hand in a mock salute "our ex wife."

A single eyebrow arched over a steely blue gaze.

"I don't have a case, you don't have a case. Everytime I go home, Diane throws something at me."

Gibbs smirked. In the end, it was maybe the panicked look on his friend's face, and maybe the promise of free alcohol that lured him upstairs to run a comb through his hair and change his shirt.

on the way there, Fornell stopped himself from complaining about Diane, Gibbs stopped himself from saying I told you so, and Fornell filled Gibbs in on the Bureau's scuttlebutt, and they'd placed a few friendly wagers about who was likely to sing off-key karaoke, and who was likely to upchuck in the topiary.

Once they were threading their way through the crowd packed into the rented hotel ballroom, Gibbs started to wish he hadn't come, or that he'd taught Fornell a few key words in ASL. Phrases like "make mine a double" or "sorry, I'm getting out of here." By the time he had a bourbon in hand, he'd lost Fornell completely. He lingered by the bar, letting conversations wash over him.

"Yeah, my nephew wants to be an agent. My sister will kill me."

."The bribe he took was how much?"

"... did you ever get that guy ... "  
"The 'skins traded him? There goes next season!"

"Seriously, what's up with Agent Mulder?"

"You mean basement guy? Spooky?"

"And so I said to her 'Are you KIDDING ME?'..."  
"...paperwork, paperwork, paperwork..."  
"... the senator and his..."

Pressure at his elbow and he sidestepped down the bar to give the woman room. "Bourbon please. Neat."

He looked down at the redhead standing next to him, who blew her bangs up off her forehead with a harassed sigh, then grinned sheepishly as she saw him watching her.

She collected her glass.

He tilted his glass towards hers. They clinked glasses.

"What department are you in?" she asked.

"NIS. Over in the Navy Yard. Jethro Gibbs."

"Agent Dana Scully. X-Files. Paranormal investigations with Agent Fox Mulder."

_Basement guy?_ Gibbs wondered, and smirked but didn't say anything. Dana looked up at him, as though she was braced for a snide comment, and seemed to relax when Gibbs only said. "Pleased to meet you."

They sipped for a moment, standing side by side, watching the dance floor full of people who spent far too much time at their desks or in the field bracing for sudden loud noises.

Under the smell of sweat, beer and stale cigarettes that always seems to linger in large hotel rooms, Gibbs could smell his own bourbon, hers, and a spicy, musky scent that had to be her perfume. "Looking forward to the holidays?" he asked, when the silence made him think too much. He smiled down at her.

She turned towards him and he could see all the way down her shirt. Not that he noticed. "It's too early to think about the holidays. I'm still getting used to the idea of the Department's party being just barely in December, so they can't be accused of tying it to any particular religious winter holiday."

Gibbs rolled his eyes. Typical FBI crap.

"NIS- naval investigative"

"service," he finished for her."

She looked him up and down, taking her time about it. "Marines?"

"Semper fi," he said.

She set her drink down on the bar, cupped her chin in her hand. "I always loved boats. Ships." she said with a dreamy smile. "My dad raised us on Moby Dick. He used to call me Starbuck."

She laughed. "You know, my partner doesn't even know that."

"Is that so?" he leaned in a little closer.

The piped in music changed to a faster, more insistent beat. Gibbs noticed her bobbing a little, saw the glint of the fine cross necklace nestled between her.... he wasn't looking. He leaned a little closer so she could hear him under the beat and the conversation. "You like this song?" he murmured. He saw the blush creeping across her creamy skin.

"I do."

"You want to dance?"


	3. Flashback Continued

Gibbs offered his hand, and led Dana Scully into the throng of people. He was in luck- the music changed to a swing beat soon after they joined the dancing crowd. He whirled her across the floor, leading the way through steps and turns, and steering them away from less accomplished dancers. Even in heels, she had to stretch on tiptoe to continue the conversation, in breathless snippets between spins.

He lost track of time. He'd already lost track of Fornell. When the music turned modern and uptempo again, and her hips began to sway to the new beat, he forgot he didn't especially like dancing.

Spent and laughing, and still trading stories, they leaned against the bar, drinking ice water. Dana pulled her hair off her neck and fanned herself. He leaned in and blew gently on the back of her neck.

"Better?"

She shot him a flirty look over her shoulder. "No, I'm still quite warm."

"Huh," he said. "Wonder why." His hand found its way to the small of her back, fingertips resting lightly on the damp, silky fabric.

When Fornell caught up with them some time later, sporting a fuzzy Santa hat at a rakish tilt, Gibbs let him know his plan had changed.

On the way home, he and Dana stopped at an all night diner for milkshakes. He couldn't remember whose idea that had been. But he did remember Dana kicking her shoes off under the table with a relieved sigh. And then he remembered one foot idly stroking against his ankle while she calmly went on a Ducky-worthy tangent about forensic science. The whole experience had an innocent mischief to it, like two Norman Rockwell kids staying out late after prom.

A couple of weeks later, after dinners, rambling phone conversations sandwiched around the strange hours they both kept, and countless goodbye kisses on front doorsteps, Gibbs showed Dana his boat.

When, after a few such evenings, he couldn't reach her, he wondered if she was undercover, or on a tense case... or if maybe he'd moved too fast for her. But, after a few oblique, but worrying comments from Fornell, he managed to get his hands on a few files. What he read there... made him stop looking.


	4. Abby's lab, present day

Present Day (author's note- by which I mean early Season 5, because I prefer Jenny to Vance)

Abby looked from her professor to her boss, and back. Was unflappable, "Ice Queen" Professor Scully... was she blushing? Was Gibbs? "This goes so far beyond hinky," she muttered. "So very, very far beyond."

Her voice roused them both. Gibbs was the first to recover, grabbing a roll of paper towels from the counter and crouching down to deal with the spilled coffee. Looking down at the mess actually bought him time to think, bought him time to see what Dana would say.

"We met about a year after I stopped teaching full time and started working with Agent Mulder on the X Files."

He stood up and chucked the soggy brown mess into the trash can. "Dana, do you want to go for a milkshake?"

"I'd like that, Jethro."

He took her hand and helped her off her perch on the high stool, smiling at the sense of deja vu. "Abbs, if you get a hit from AFIS, call my cell phone."

as the pair of them sailed, yes, sailed out of her lab, Abby stared at their retreating backs. She was more surprised than she'd ever been.

Gibbs was willing to answer his cell phone???


	5. Milkshakes

And the last chapter- still present day (season 5). NCIS still not mine, nor XF. - Murph

Sitting in the diner a few blocks away from the Navy Yard, it occurred to Gibbs he had no idea if the milkshakes were any good. He should have taken her to the coffee place. But the last thing he needed right now was more caffeine. He understood how Abby felt after her third Caf-Pow.

"Abbs is probably getting McGee to hack into at least three databases to figure out how we really know each other," he said to Dana with a grin. "But I ran you out of there so fast you didn't get to meet my team, did you? They're a great bunch of agents. Tim McGee's our tech guy. We've got a Mossad trained agent, Ziva David, who's a great fighter, and a brilliant interrogator, and an ex Baltimore cop, Tony DiNozzo, who's much smarter than he lets on. Most of the time."

Scully smiled at the pride on her old friend's face. "Sounds like you've got exactly the right team. Funny, how that always happens for you," she said, remembering the stories he had told her years ago, of working with Mike Franks. "I'm looking forward to meeting them later. And to catching up with Ducky. I haven't seen him since the conference at Johns Hopkins."

The waitress arrived to take their orders.

"Chocolate shake please," Dana said.

"Make mine vanilla. And a cup of coffee on the side." He thought about making it decaf. No, bring on the deja vu.

"What have you been up to? I haven't heard from you since..."

A shadow crossed her face. "Listen- I meant to get back in touch with you after, after I came back. I'm sorry about"

He cut her off. "Never apologize. It's a sign of weakness. I read the file." He didn't have to say how many parts were obliterated, marked classified, how the file had raised twice as many questions as it answered. "You were under deep cover."

She laughed ruefully. "That's one way to see it, yes."

Their shakes arrived, flanked by frosty metal containers of excess ice cream. She grinned at him, then poured half the contents of her glass back into the container. Smiling, he did the same, following it with half his coffee. They traded glasses, and topped each up, stirring the resultant concoctions.

He sipped, tasting memory along with chilled sweetness, and the edge of the coffee. Then he grinned at her. "You're right. This is the only way to do a black and white shake."

"Mmm. They just don't work when someone else makes them. You're the one who thought of the coffee though."

He sipped again. When he'd gotten the file, after endless confusing phone calls, red tape, rebuttals, and one shouting match with Fornell where he'd almost punched the man, he'd stopped at the store on the way home. He'd bought a pint of chocolate, a pint of vanilla, and dug his blender out of the back of a kitchen cabinet. The ice cream had degraded to sticky soup while he read.

"So what have you been up to?" he asked. "Are you still partners with Mulder?"

"We're not working together any more. Not officially. But we're still together."

Watching the play of emotions across her face, he caught more shadows, old worries, fears, memories. She'd broken Rule 12, in a big way, and had her heart broken for it.

"Are you happy?" he asked, quietly. "Does being with him make you happy?"

She stirred her straw around in her milkshake, then looked up at Gibbs with a smile that didn't do justice to the shine in her blue eyes. "Sometimes. When he's not being a frustrating pain in the ass." Her laughter had such warmth, the warmth of years shared, and love, complicated but found. She sipped her shake, then asked:

"What about you? Is there anyone in your life?"

He sipped his shake, found a delicious bitter patch where the coffee hadn't mixed with the ice cream, and thought, for a while. Thought about ex wives, explosions, narrow escapes, losses, boats built and burned and built again, endless smacks to the back of the head, "on your six, boss," "grab your gear," "what've you got for me, Abbs?"

He looked up at Dana. "I have my team."

Dana understood.


End file.
